FUNNY, HOW EASILY IT ALL CAME BACK. FOUR WEEKS NOW since his last sighting of Joe and still he felt as if the old man might reappear at any moment. The red flannel sachets were in place in the vegetable garden and at the corners of the house. The trees at the land’s boundary were similarly adorned, though the wind kept stripping them off. Marigolds, propagated in the home-made cold frame, were beginning to open their bright petals amongst Narcisse’s seed potatoes. Poitou baked a special couronne loaf in thanks for his grain pack, which, he claimed, had given him more relief than any drug. Of course, Jay knew he would have said that anyway.
Now his garden had the best collection of herbs in the village. The lavender was still green, but already more pungent than Joe’s had ever been, and there was thyme and cologne mint and lemon balm and rosemary and great drifts of basil. He gave a whole basket of these to Popotte when she came by with the mail, and another to Rodolphe. Joe often gave out little charms – goodwill charms, he called them – to visitors, and Jay began to do the same: tiny bunches of lavender or mint or pineapple sage, tied with ribbons of different colours – red for protection, white for luck, blue for healing. Funny how it all came back. People assumed this was another English custom, the general explanation for all his eccentricities. Some took to wearing these little posies pinned to their coats and jackets – though it was May it was still too cool for the locals to wear their summer clothing, though Jay had long since turned to shorts and T-shirts for everyday wear. Strangely enough Jay found the return to Joe’s familiar customs rather comforting. When he was a boy Joe’s perimeter rituals, his incense, sachets, pig-Latin incantations and sprinklings of herbs too often irritated him. He found them embarrassing, like someone singing too fervently in school assembly. To his adolescent self, much of Joe’s everyday magic seemed rather too commonplace, too natural, like cookery or gardening, stripped of its mysteries. Serious though he was about his workings, there was a cheery practicality to all of it, which made Jay’s romantic soul rebel. He would have preferred solemn invocations, black robes and midnight ritual. That he might have believed. Reared on comic books and trash fiction, that at least would have rung true. Now that it was too late, Jay found he had rediscovered the peace of working with the soil. Everyday magic, Joe used to call it. Layman’s alchemy. Now he understood what the old man meant. But in spite of all this Joe stayed away. Jay prepared the land for his return like a well-raked seedbed. He planted and weeded according to the lunar cycle, as Joe would have done. He did everything right. He tried to have faith.
He told himself that Joe was never there at all, that it was in his imagination. But perversely, now Joe was gone he needed to believe it was otherwise. Joe was really there, a part of him insisted. Really there, and he had blown it with his anger and disbelief. If only he could make him come back, Jay promised himself, things would be different. There were so many things left unfinished. He felt a helpless rage at himself. He’d had a second chance, and stupidly he’d blown it. He worked in the garden every day until dusk. He was sure Joe would come. That he could make him come.